My Actifit Report Card: December 7 2024

On October 15, Japanese researchers published a research titled “a possible evolutionary trap for the widespread phenotype of a nematomorphic parasite”, a boring title you may think, it turns out that it hides a horror story, a horrifying story where the victims are mantises.

Mantids are insects that are famous for the fact that the females tear off and eat the heads of the males after mating, in reality it is not always, they do it when they are hungry or if the male bothers them, let's go with the normal thing, who wouldn't want to rip off the head of someone who is bothering you.

The thing is that Japanese researchers wondered why every autumn in Japan you can see dead mantises on the asphalt of the roads and in large numbers, the researchers discovered that the mantises were victims of krill worms, these worms are born in the water, then they stick to the insects that pass near that water, they grow inside the mantises eating it from the inside and then they manipulate them by attacking their nervous system so that they go and look for the water because as soon as those worms reach the water They burst the abdomen of the mantids and lay eggs again in the water and the cycle begins.

What does this have to do with the dead mantises on the road? What the worm does is turn the mantises into “zombies” to take them to the water, which is why they end up on the road. This process coincides precisely in autumn, it turns out that the researchers discovered which is that these “zombie” mantises confuse the shine of the asphalt with water and that is why they end up on the road and Victims of the cars, more than 80% of the mantises collected from the asphalt by the researchers were infested with these worms.

By the way, if you see a mantis in your garden or in the field, do not kill it, because they are very beneficial for gardens, since they eat insects that can become pests for crops.

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Cycling, Home Improvement